Measuring Weather

For the past week and a half our class has been investigating the process of measuring weather. We learned about four tools that are used to help scientists measure weather. An anemometer is used to measure the speed of the wind, a rain gauge is used to measure the amount of rain that falls over the course of a day, a wind/weather vane tells the direction the wind is blowing, and a thermometer tells you the temperature. 

Our class made our own version of three of the tools. From left to right, we have an anemometer with Jared, our rain gauge with Damario, and our weather vane with Thierry. For a week we went outside and used these tools to measure the weather in the back of Montello. Then we would come inside and use weather websites to help us check our data. The following is what we have learned:

1. Rain evaporates over time so sometimes we measure less rain than www.weather.com does.
2. When you are gone for a three day weekend and it rains the whole time, you do not have an accurate measurement of how much rain has fallen in the past 24 hours.
3. Using a tack to create a spinner on our anemometer was virtually useless, so we never once saw it spin and luckily we were right everyday that we guessed the wind was going 0 mph. 
4. Because we also used a tack to make the spinner on our wind vane, it was easier to just lick our finger and hold it in the air/look at the trees to help us find the direction the wind was blowing.

In the end, our class had a great time working with weather measurement tools. We looked forward to that part of our day for the entire week. Recording data we were able to check our accuracy against real weather measurements we found online. We also spent time graphing our data and analyzing results. We definitely learned weather is a tricky thing to measure!